2023-2024 Looking Ahead from August 28

These last four months of 2023 will see three novelettes posted

1. Ghosts is a story where everyone dies in the first chapter.  Old man Nathan and seven year-old Mya are left to make their way in… they are not sure where they are or where they should be.

2. Charmed is a Halloween story that should bring us to Halloween ( or rather Wednesday November first). It is an old fashioned Disney-like story but without the singing. Jake takes his baby sister Elizabeth trick-or-treating and gets distracted by his friends. Elizabeth is kidnapped and taken to a very strange place. Jake can only follow.

3. A Holiday Journey is a Christmas story. This one has the music. Christopher Shepherd’s niece Lilly, his only living family member, is spirited away and Uncle Chris must go in search of her. There are adventures and revelations along the way.

So, it seems dead, kidnapped, or spirited away little girls is a theme. Well, you won’t know how things turn out until you read the stories.

2024 Coming Attractions

Beginning MONDAY January 1, 2024

Kairos Medieval 5: Medieval Tales  The story of Genevieve and Charlemagne, the story of Thegn Elgar and Alfred the Great, and finally, the stories of Kristina the shield maiden and Yasmina, Princess of Mecca and Medina, two young women whose stories are intertwined, almost like twins, though they are separated by more than thirty years.

Interlude (TBA)

Kairos Medieval 6: Before Sunrise The book begins with the second stories of Kristina and Yasmina where they are forced to marry the wrong person, get out of that bad situation, and marry the right person, and the book ends with the story of Don Giovanni and his circus: The Greatest Show on Earth. (He stole that line from the future but he figures no one will sue him in the year Y1K).

Note:

For those of you who read the 2 Kairos Medieval stories of Greta, the Wise Woman of Dacia, with her two partners in time, Festuscato, the Last Senator of Rome and Gerraint in the Days of King Arthur, and especially for those who went on to read the 2 Kairos Medieval books of Marguerite, where Festuscato and Gerraint finished their stories as well, it seemed only fair to post the last two books in the Kairos Medieval group. Notice I used the word group, not series.

I am reluctant to call them book 5 and book 6 in a series. I don’t want anyone to think they have to read books 1-4 to understand what is going on in books 5 and 6. I  am also reluctant to call them a series, for that matter, because it is not that kind of a series. Each lifetime of the Kairos is a story unto itself. Even when the story is split between two books as with Margueritte and Greta, I work hard to make each “half” a complete story that comes to a satisfying conclusion and doesn’t leave cliffhangers.

Because people are inclined to get the wrong idea and think they have to begin with book 1 in the series, I am reluctant to number the books 1-6. Instead, I am considering color coding the books according to the rainbow. Greta’s 2 books could be the red book and the orange book. Margueritte’s books could be yellow and green. These last two books can then be the blue book and the violet or purple book. They are still marked more or less in rainbow order ( they are in temporal order) but maybe people will be less likely to think of books one through six and less inclined to mistakenly think they absolutely have to read book one first.

Now, I am not saying reading the cluster of Kairos Medieval books in rainbow order is a bad idea. Clearly when Greta from the first 2 books shows up in book 4 or book 5, you will know who we are talking about, though I do try to give sufficient information so that should not be a problem. Certainly, the Princess and the Storyteller get mentioned or show up all the time, and I have neither posted nor published any of their books. Likewise, Diogenes and Doctor Mishka show up regularly and I haven’t even written their books yet. So, while it might be nice to read the Kairos Medieval books from the first book or the red book forward, it is not necessary. Of course, I would not mind selling all six books once I get them up for sale, but that is another issue.

Color coding rather than numbering the books? And how about calling the books the Kairos Medieval group or cluster rather than use the word series?  What do you think?

*